


First Borne

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Domestic Violence, Gen, Miscarriage, Pre-Canon, Stillbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-16 16:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16957152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Raylan is Frances’s first baby. He’s beautiful, when they put him in her arms: his face red and his eyes wide, with a full head of silky hair that smells like the warmth of sunshine on your head and moonshine in your belly.





	First Borne

**Author's Note:**

> Mention of miscarriage, stillbirth. Mention of abuse and child abuse. Mention of hill remedies. Random musings on Frances Givens and her baby, Raylan.

Raylan is Frances’s first baby. He’s beautiful, when they put him in her arms: his face red and his eyes wide, with a full head of silky hair that smells like the warmth of sunshine on your head and moonshine in your belly. He’s born less than a year into her marriage. Raylan was no trouble to conceive and even less trouble to carry; he’s the perfect son and heir to the Givens name.

He’s born at almost the same time as Clary’s first healthy baby. It’s Clary Crowder’s third pregnancy, her fourth year of marriage. One baby didn’t make it to the fourth month. The second made it so far that Clary had let Bo assemble the crib, paint the nursery pink for a girl. The third baby Frances helped with—Clary had trusted the doctors with her first two babies, and looked how that had turned out. For the third baby, Frances convinced her to trust in the hills.

Clary had moved from upstate back when she was in high school, when her daddy had found work at the mines. She named the baby Boyd, for the county where her great-grandparents lay waiting for the Rapture. Boyd Crowder, Bo’s oldest son, bald as an egg with lungs that could call down all creation, laying in the hospital crib next to Frances’s son.

(Frances didn’t help with the second boy. Bowman Crowder hadn’t needed help at all—he’d come into the world twisting and kicking and ready to raise hell. Frances always suspected he’d brought a little of it with him, from wherever he’d come.)

Frances nursed Raylan for longer than the doctors told her, liked the feel of his weight in her arms and his mouth suckling at her breast. Liked to think of her grandmama, up in the hills, who said she’d nursed her boys until they were old enough to shoot their first gun. The doctors said it was the nursing, that kept her from getting pregnant again.

Raylan was a good baby. He cried, sure, and Arlo threatened to take him out back and shoot him if he didn’t hush, but Raylan always quieted right down as soon as she lifted him up out of his crib. He was scared of the dark, that was all. Scared of waking up and finding himself in the world all alone. He caught the croup, at ten months, stopped breathing for long enough that Frances felt her own heart go cold in her chest, but he weathered it all with barely a whimper.

The Christmas Raylan was one, Frances burned the ham and Arlo had invited the Crowders over for dinner. That was the winter he sprained her wrist, while Raylan watched from his high chair and cried.

The Christmas Raylan was two, Helen bought him a wooden dog on wheels. The wheels squeaked, and Arlo tired of the sound right quick. When Raylan wouldn’t stop tugging it behind him—“Doggy, mama! Look, doggy! Ruff!”—Arlo snatched it up and snapped the wheels right off. When Raylan wailed, Arlo spanked him until his bottom was black and blue. Raylan didn’t say a word the rest of Christmas, no matter how many sweets Frances put in his small, sticky hands. He didn’t sit for days. He didn’t play with his toys where Arlo could see.

That was the winter Frances went to see Cousin Mary, to get the recipe she’d need. She’d gone before, of course, to help Clary Crowder turn a baby from a desperate wish into a living, breathing child. This time, Frances was after a different sort of cure.

“Don’t you at least want two?” Mary wondered, though she ticked off on her fingers all the ingredients Frances would need. “A boy needs someone to grow up with, and it ain’t like Helen’s having any tads of her own.”

“He’ll have his friends,” Frances declared, and didn’t say that there would be no more babies in the Givens household. No more soft weight in her arms and a babe suckling at her breast. No more broken toys and bruises and silences that clawed at Frances’s soul whenever Daddy was in the room.

Frances had brought Raylan into the world, and she’d helped bring Boyd Crowder into this world, and that was plenty to be getting on with. That was more than enough.


End file.
